As soon as she woke up, Rachel dashed to the shower and then to the kitchen. She wolfed down breakfast. “What’s the hurry, buttercup?” Dave asked. “It’s Saturday.”
“Meeting Joon for an epic bike ride,” she said. “I asked Mom last night, and she said I could.”
“I wasn’t going to say you couldn’t. I think it’s great you have such a good friend. I remember when I was a kid, we used to ride our bikes. . . .” He launched into an anecdote that involved him, a friend, two bikes, and one raccoon. Or possibly a badger. Rachel wasn’t actually listening. As she put her cereal bowl in the dishwasher and grabbed her sneakers, she was thinking about Anna Smith Strong and how half the books in the library had discounted her, exactly as Linda had said people had done in Nancy’s own time. Rachel’d rather believe the other books, the ones that said Nancy was a hero of the Revolution. But what if the skeptics were right?
As she was tying her laces, she noticed Dave had fallen silent. He seemed to be waiting for her to respond, and she had zero idea what he’d just said. “Um, that’s great?”
“Rachel . . .”
Uh-oh, she thought.
“You should know you can talk to me about anything,” Dave said. “I promise I’ll stop talking and listen.” He mimed zipping his lips shut and tossing away the key.
She wasn’t in trouble. Good. “Yeah, I know.” And there was something she wanted to ask. “While I was at the historical society yesterday, the historian mentioned your relative Anna Smith Strong. Did you know some people think she wasn’t a spy?”
“Well, it is as much family legend as historical fact,” Dave admitted.
Wait—what? That was not what she wanted him to say. “But . . . at school, they said she’s one of the Culper spies! The only known female member! Total historical fact!” Plus Rachel had read an actual Culper letter, the one with the code 355.
“She might be,” Dave said quickly. “It’s a theory. You’ll find as you get older that a lot of things you’ve been taught are theories. Some, like the theory of gravity, are very, very likely-to-be-true theories. But a lot are more like our best guess, based on what we know. If it helps, I’m an Anna believer.”
“Nancy,” Rachel corrected automatically. “The story doesn’t make sense without her. She’s the link that completes the ring. It’s not a theory. It’s truth.”
“It’s okay for it to be a theory. Making theories out of what we know . . . that’s how we learn about the world and ourselves and our past. Besides, none of the Culper spies ever admitted to being spies in their lifetimes. Everything we know about them is a theory. It’s just that some parts of the story are supported by more evidence than others.”
She remembered what he’d said about the ring, how the museum wouldn’t accept it because he didn’t have any paperwork. But it could have been Nancy’s. That was a theory based on not much evidence. What about the evidence in favor of Nancy as a spy? She knew it wasn’t definitive, but how could it be, when the truth was a secret?
“It’s important to chase down evidence and make theories,” Dave said. “If we didn’t have historians doing that, well, we wouldn’t know anything about the Culpers or the ways they made a difference.”
Rachel sat a little straighter at that, pushing away her thoughts about evidence and theories. “What difference did they make?” she asked.
“A big one.” Dave punctuated his words with a wave all around them, as if to say they’d changed the entire kitchen. Or maybe he meant the entire world. “The Culper Spy Ring was the most effective espionage organization of the entire Revolutionary War, on both sides. After the war, one of the British spies said, ‘Washington didn’t outfight us—he simply outspied us.’”
“That’s awesome,” Rachel said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Did you know they saved the French fleet?”
“What French fleet?”
Dave brightened as if she’d just given him a birthday present. He loved to talk. “You see, Washington was expecting reinforcements from France—desperately needed reinforcements—that were supposed to land in Rhode Island. And the Culper Spy Ring uncovered news that the British were planning a surprise attack to stop the French. So the Culpers arranged for false intelligence to fall into the hands of the British, making them believe that Washington was going to attack New York. Based on the fake information, the British turned around halfway to Rhode Island and sailed back to New York to defend the city. And the French landed safely, changing the course of the war.”
“Wow,” Rachel said.
Dave wasn’t done. “And some believe the Culpers were instrumental in exposing Benedict Arnold as a traitor. Most famous traitor in American history.”
“Wow!” Rachel repeated.
Catching her enthusiasm, Brewster wagged his tail and yipped happily.
Encouraged by both Rachel and Brewster, Dave talked louder and got more animated as he went on. “Plus, near the end of the war, when Washington was trying to decide whether to retake Manhattan or join Lafayette in Virginia, the Culper Spy Ring provided the intel he needed—and he chose to go to Virginia and won the Battle of Yorktown, which ended the war. The United States of America was born thanks to the spy ring started right here in this very town.” Dave smacked the table for emphasis.
Rachel jumped up. “And Nancy was a part of it! I’m going to prove it!”
“Awesome!” Dave cheered. “Wait . . . what? How?”
But Rachel was already heading for the door. “Thanks, Dave! You’re the best!” With a wave, she sprinted out the door and jumped on her bike. “Tell Mom I’m off to meet Joon!”
She was at the end of her street in less than a minute. A few seconds later, Joon joined her on his bike. “Got your message,” he said. “You said ‘rutabaga.’ What’s the problem?”
“‘Rutabaga’ means I have a lead on a clue.”
“I thought we said that was ‘asparagus.’”
“‘Asparagus’ is the opposite of a clue,” she said, “because asparagus are limp sticks of vegetable grossness. ‘Carrot’ means clue because carrots are delicious, and rutabaga—”
“Is a root vegetable,” he finished. “Like a carrot but not quite as good. Right. Sorry.”
Quickly, she filled him in on her idea and the historian Linda and the clock in the Sherwood-Jayne House as they pedaled again around Little Bay and past the churches on the corner of the Village Green. This time, they were going farther—past the school to the intersection with 25A, then left at the traffic light. She hoped Joon’s parents weren’t tracking his phone. They wouldn’t be thrilled that he was biking on 25A. It was only for a short stretch, though, and it had a sidewalk. But still, they liked to worry.
“I’ve found out things too,” Joon said when she finished.
“About the new house?”
“Not that,” Joon said. “Well, yes, that too. There still aren’t any houses to rent close by. They want to visit another one today, even farther away.”
She yelped. “What?”
“They said I could go with you first, though.”
Good, she thought.
“But I have to be back soon.”
Less good.
“We’ve got about an hour and a half to look for the next clue.”
“Then we’d better step on it,” Rachel said.
She pedaled faster, and he kept up as they turned down Gnarled Hollow, then Old Post Road. Just beyond the sign for Play Groups Preschool was an apple orchard, followed by an old house with a walnut tree in front and a few barns behind. She saw the sign “Sherwood-Jayne Farm c. 1730” as they rode up the drive.
There were no cars in the hayfield that was marked as a parking lot but currently had three sheep and two goats in it, but the driveway had one car, a blue SUV. Rachel hoped that was Linda’s. If it wasn’t, then they’d ridden all this way for nothing. They leaned their bikes against a tree trunk that was twice as wide as Rachel’s arms stretched out.
Before they could knock on the door, a second car pulled into the driveway, a tiny white car, and Linda popped out and waved to them with her cane. “That’s my historian friend,” Rachel told Joon.
“Then who’s already inside?”
“Another historian?” Rachel guessed.
“Do you think they’re going to let us just look for clues?” Joon said.
Rachel considered it. Linda was clearly willing to help, but the historian inside was unknown. He or she could be like the grumpy man they’d already encountered twice. What if there was a clue in there and they weren’t given the chance to find it? Joon had only a little more than an hour before his parents wanted him home. She thought of Linda driving all the way here to help them. Maybe she wouldn’t be like other grown-ups. Maybe she’d listen and take them seriously. “I think we should tell her the truth.”
“She won’t believe us,” Joon said.
“She’s a Nancy fan,” Rachel said. She told him what Linda had said, about Nancy being discounted and overlooked in her own time. “I think . . . Linda wants to be certain Nancy’s story is told. I think Linda cares that we care.”
“I think it’s a risk,” Joon said. “If she decides we’re just making it up, then she might not want to help us at all, especially if she cares as much about Nancy as you say.”
Rachel thought again of the woman in the church, who’d assumed they were playing a game, and Charlie, the custodian, who’d readily believed the same. There had also been the grumpy man, who’d basically accused them of being up to no good. They had plenty of examples of grown-ups who didn’t believe two kids were capable of doing anything important. Could she really be sure that Linda wouldn’t be like that too? Rachel didn’t think she would, but she didn’t know for certain. “We’re a team. It has to be unanimous. If you want, we can go with the scavenger-hunt cover again. Grown-ups seem to like that.”
“Yeah, that’s safer.”
With Joon in tow, Rachel trotted over to the historian. “Hi! This is my friend Joon.”
“Hi, Rachel and Joon,” Linda said. “Lovely to meet kids excited about history. Now, would you like the full tour? The curator is here. We could ask if she’d mind showing you around.”
Rachel took a breath. “Actually, we were hoping to look around by ourselves. You see, we’re doing this scavenger hunt. . . .” Her voice wobbled slightly on the word “scavenger.”
“Oh?” Linda said, both eyebrows raised. “You’re playing a game?” She sounded, Rachel thought, disappointed. She glanced at Joon to see if he’d noticed. Linda hadn’t reacted like the others. Maybe they could trust her?
He gave her a little nod—he had noticed too.
“Unanimous?” Rachel asked, hopeful.
“Unanimous,” he agreed, and then said to Linda, “It’s not a game. It’s real.”
“Oh?” Linda said again, in a different tone. “I’m listening.”
Rachel launched into an explanation of all they’d done and found so far. She pulled Dave’s ring out of her pocket—she’d taken to carrying it with her all the time—and showed it to Linda, who examined it. When she finished, Rachel put it back in its velvet box in her pocket. Joon explained what they’d found on the grist-mill stone, and Rachel told her how they’d looked it up in the codebook. “And so that’s why we’re here. We want to look at Nancy’s clock, to see whether she left a message on it or in it.”
“You’re certain the ring belonged to Anna Smith Strong?” Linda asked.
“Well . . .” Rachel thought of what Dave had said. “All we have are family stories.”
Linda smiled. “Family stories can be an excellent place to start. That is exactly where the historian who first proposed that Anna Smith Strong was a spy began. But you can’t stop there. You need evidence to turn stories into truth.”
“We don’t want to stop,” Joon assured her.
“Will you help us?” Rachel asked.
Thinking, Linda pursed her lips.
“We don’t know if it will lead anywhere,” Rachel said. “Maybe Nancy wasn’t a spy, and maybe there’s no treasure hunt, and it’s all a waste of time. But I think Nancy left this puzzle for us, and we have to try.” She added: “Please.”
Rachel held her breath while Linda considered it.
“I wasn’t allowed to study history in college,” Linda said wistfully. “My parents insisted the only reasonable option was nursing. But I’ve always had a passion for it. I believe that chasing the truth is never a waste of time.”
Hope rose in Rachel’s throat. Was that a yes? Was Linda going to help them?
“We’ll be clever like Nancy was,” Linda said. “I’ll distract the curator, while you two look for your clue. Come with me.”
“Thank you,” they both cried.
She led them to the back door and inside. It took a second for Rachel’s eyes to adjust to the lower light. It looked like a kitchen—an old one without a refrigerator, stove, or oven. Instead of anything electrical, it had a brick fireplace with pewter dishes on top of it. A long kitchen table with candlesticks was in the center of the room, and a spinning wheel sat in one corner.
“Linda!” the curator greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.
“Ah, Camila! So nice to see you! These are my new friends, Rachel and Joon. Kids, why don’t you two take a look around, while Camila and I catch up?”
Sitting down at an antique table, Linda began to chat with the curator, cheerfully discussing the weather and how much she was looking forward to her upcoming move into her daughter and son-in-law’s home. She was going to help with the grandkids, in exchange for never having to worry about caring for a lawn again.
Rachel peeked into the room on the left: all the walls had been painted a greenish blue with leafy vines and white roses. In spots, the paint had flaked away, but elsewhere the colors were still bright in the light from the front windows. A table with a checkerboard sat in the center of the room, and a desk with a top that folded open was tucked into one corner. On it, a quill was displayed in an ink bottle, in front of a dozen little cubbies. This room had a fireplace too, with pewter candlesticks on the mantel, iron fire tools on the hearth, and a brass kettle beside the grate. More important, though, there was no clock.
“Over here!” Joon whisper-called.
Talking louder to distract from Joon, Linda expounded on how nice it was going to be to not have to take care of a whole house on her own anymore. The upkeep had gotten too much for her, she said. She then launched into an anecdote about a plumber and a box of antique dolls.
Rachel scooted back into the kitchen, then through the doorway on the right. Everything was brown in this room: wood floor, wood-paneled walls around yet another fireplace, and wood chairs around a wood dining table. A spiderlike chandelier of a different shade of brown—she couldn’t tell if it was rusted or if it was supposed to be that color—dangled over the table. A narrow bed with frayed, faded quilts was tucked by the front windows. Oil paintings with thick gold-painted frames decorated the walls. Most were landscapes that were too dark to really see and just looked like more brown. In one corner was a cabinet (again brown) filled with decorated plates (mostly white and blue). And in the other corner, by the fireplace, was a tall clock in the deepest shade of brown of all.
Joon was standing in front of it proudly, as if he’d invented it. “Tall case clock, you said. Must be this. It has a tall case, and it’s a clock. I thought they were called grandfather clocks.”
“Must be a nickname,” Rachel whispered back. “Like how orcas are called killer whales.”
“Probably the first time anyone’s ever said a killer whale was like a clock.”
Stepping closer, Rachel stared at the clock face. It was gold. Real gold? Probably not, she decided. Or else the door would have been locked and the clock would be surrounded by lasers or a moat. All the numbers were Roman numerals, and there were fancy leaflike designs in all four corners. The minute and hour hands were etched in swirling vines as well. She didn’t see any numbers or letters that weren’t clock related—
Joon reached up and opened the little door that covered the clock face.
“Careful,” Rachel whispered. The last thing she wanted to do was disappoint the old historian by damaging anything. Linda had taken her seriously when few others did.
“I won’t hurt it,” he promised. “There could be writing inside.” He shone his phone flashlight on the inside of the case. “Or not. Are we sure this was Nancy’s clock?”
“Her parents should have labeled it with her name, like your school supplies,” Rachel said. It would have been nice if Nancy had been clearer with her clues. Of course, Rachel supposed that the mystery wouldn’t have lasted this long if Nancy had been more obvious. “All we know is six-three-three means time.”
He studied the clock. “What if we set it to 6:33?” He gently moved the hour hand to halfway between the six and seven and the minute hand to point three marks beyond the six. “You know, I think the clock might be broken. On my parent’s clock—the fancy one in the dining room—if you move one hand, the other moves with it. These move independently.”
Maybe it wasn’t broken. Maybe it was this way on purpose, and it meant they were on the right track. “Try pointing the hour hand straight at the six,” Rachel suggested.
He did that.
It didn’t reveal any new clue. There were no special words or letters that the hands pointed to, and the clock didn’t even tick. She wasn’t sure what she expected.
Maybe the clue didn’t lead to a clock? Or maybe it didn’t lead to this clock?
“It could be her favorite time, or a time that’s important to her,” Joon suggested.
The books in the library hadn’t talked about Nancy’s favorite time. Or her favorite color. Or favorite breakfast food or song, or . . . Rachel had an idea. “She could have had a favorite number.”
Joon looked at her quizzically.
“Try three fifty-five.”
He moved the hour hand to the three, and then he dragged the minute hand up to point at the eleven. Rachel heard a click, and Joon jumped back.
“Did I break it?” he asked.
Below the clock face, within the casing, a thin piece of wood had popped out—it was a little trapdoor just below the six. Rachel carefully, very carefully, opened it farther. Holding her breath, she reached inside.
Her fingertips touched metal. “Something’s there,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Joon asked.
From the other room, they heard the curator begin to wrap up their conversation. “Well, I should be getting back to work. . . .”
“Hurry!” he whispered.
Her fingers closed around the metal, and she pulled it out. A key. A small, tarnished, old-fashioned key. But to what? There wasn’t time to ask the question, to look for more clues, or even to think. Quickly, she closed the little trapdoor and then shut the clock face.
Trying to act casual, Rachel and Joon strolled back into the kitchen. “Thanks so much for letting us look around,” Rachel said to Linda and the curator.
Linda looked up. “Did you learn what you wanted to?”
“Maybe.” Rachel backed toward the door. “I’ll text or call as soon as we know more.” They couldn’t eat up their remaining time with more explanations. First solve the clue, and then they could explain what they found to Linda.
Curious, the curator began to ask, “What are you—”
“We have to get home,” Joon said quickly. “My parents want me back soon.”
They ducked out the door before the curator could finish her question and before Linda could ask any more in front of her. Side by side, they ran full tilt to their bikes and were pedaling seconds later—the key shoved deep in Rachel’s pocket, next to Nancy’s ring.